Johannes Reimers, landscape gardener for the Santa Fe railroad, has written the following interesting article for the Stockton Mail descriptive of a trip to Yosemite Valley over the new railroad out of Merced.

"If you have ever traveled over the old stage line from Merced via Coulterville, fighting dust by day and bedbugs by night - jolted, sore of limb, impatient of spirit - you will appreciate the new way to Yosemite. Formally it took you the best part of 2 days to reach the promised land. The other day I left Merced at 8 o'clock in the morning on a gasoline motor car, took lunch at Bagby, and stood on the boundary line of Yosemite in the early part of the same afternoon. The next morning the general manager of the Yosemite railway and I left the foot of El Capitan about 9:30 o'clock, rode out horses leisurely to El Portal (the terminus of the railroad), took lunch there, rested our lazy bones till 1:30, when in company with Mr. Nickerson, the chief engineer of the road, we started off with the motor car toward Merced. We traveled leisurely, for the country in wonderfully beautiful, and yet we arrived in good time for supper at Merced. After waiting two hours for a north-bound train, I arrived at my home in Stockton at 9:30 in the evening. It is difficult for me to realize sitting under my own roof in Stockton, that in the forenoon of the same day I had face El Capitan and the Bridal Veil fall in Yosemite.

"But let me tell you something of the trip. Above Snelling and Merced Falls the railway enters the Merced canyon. From there to the terminus the road follows the winding curves of the river, always within a stone's throw and often almost within touch. The hills are one glorious garden of lupins, buttercups, creamcups and Mariposa tulips. The air was laden with the fragrance of wilderness, and the Merced threw the cool breath of its snowwater in my face. It is a restless, boisterous river up there among the hills, and its laughter fills the narrow canyon all the way and become, as you grow used to it, part of the magnificent stillness of the hills.

"Along the river silvery willows trail their slender branches in the hurrying water; on the hillsides the beautiful Sabin pine is a-glitter with sunlight reflected from its long, shining needles. There are whole gardens of lilac and white ceonothus in the chaparral, and high up under the dented peaks of slate cliffs are mats of yellow posies the shine like gold in the sunlight. The hills rise gradually higher and higher. Soon the rolling, grassy backs of the foothills are a thing of the past. With them has gone the Sabin pine, and, instead on the wild, ragged hills, slashed by dark ravines and canyons, the spires of the yellow pine loom up, and purple mountains, with snow in the shadow of the pines and Douglas firs, jump into view as the road turns thee point of a great perpendicular cliff with the roaring river below it. The air grows more and more invigorating. It is filled with the fragrance of pines and woodland flowers. But the road continues to follow the graceful curves of the river to it terminus at El Portal, as were if fond merry company. At El Portal the canyon has widened to broad proportions. It is a sunshiny place with high, wooded, snow-splashed mountains all about it, and from a forested ridge high up under the skyline the Chinkapin (Chinquapin) fall tumbles in foaming splendor over the rocks into forest-hidden deeps, its water joining the Merced above camp.

"It is a most beautiful trip from the San Joaquin valley to El Portal, but the greatest scenery is from here on over the new stage road, which, on my humble suggestion, has been named Camino del Portal, into Yosemite. This road was very expensive to build. It took about eight carloads of powder to blast its way through the tremendously wild and rocky canyon. This road also closely follows the course of the Merced river, which here is one succession of wild cascades tumbling the green snowwater into boiling fretting ponds overhung by tremendous mountain walls rising perpendicularly, in places almost as high as the walls of Yosemite itself. Here, under the shade of the pines, are whole gardens of azaleas now in bud, getting read for full bloom by the time you are ready to go over the new road into Yosemite.

"Mr. Lehmer, the General Manager of the Yosemite railway, and I started before daybreak on a horseback ride into the valley. I have not the power of describing to you the charm of the wild mountains and woods at that early hour, while the full moon was yet up mingling its light with the faint luminous atmosphere, clear and cool as crystal, which is the beginning of the day in the mountains. The woods were silent except for the constant roar of the restless Merced and the splashing of the Crane creek cascades. They were full of soft, spooky shadows; the stupendous mountain sides rose in mystery, veiled in softest purple; but when we reached the valley itself the sun was gilding the snow on the Yosemite peaks, while the valley yet softened in the hazy substance of the night. The Bridal Veil fall and the Maiden's Tear, across the valley from it, hung seemingly motionless, half veiled by distance and night air, silent, as were the ghosts of themselves.

"But the Merced was as boisterous here as ever. Spring had just come into the valley. The oaks had begun to bud out. But the dogwood stood covered with magnificent bloom, and the strawberries on the meadows showed thousands of unopened buds. There is a Northland tone to the spring in Yosemite. It reminds me of spring among my Norwegian mountains - so new, so clean, so refreshing, so hopeful, so joyous with the lovemaking of migratory singers. One of the peaks of the Three Sisters cast a perpendicular shadow over its own misty feet. The shadow line shifted slowly along the perpendicular wall as the sun rose - a veritable tremendous sun dial keeping time for the old and mighty ogres of Yosemite. Never has the great mystery, so supernaturally great, as on that early morning. There were no tourists in the valley as yet. It lay there undisturbed before me in the awaking glory of a new day. I imagined that never before had it been trodden by man, that my companion and I were the first to enter this wonderful temple of the sun.

"On the mountains about the valley the snow yet lies deep. In two weeks from now, when the Yosemite railway will be opened for service, the falls will be as great and glorious as ever they were. You are tired of noise, of struggle, should then seek the wilderness of Yosemite - be a worshiper in the great Temple of the Sun. Its god will heal you wounds, its peace will linger with you forever, its grandeur will humble you, its strength will aid you for old and for new tasks, its beauty will make you kinder."